EU 'Youth Jobs Guarantee' must be progressed

Mid Ulster Sinn Féin MLA, Francie
Molloy has emphasised the need to tackle youth unemployment and has called for
the urgent implementation of the EU 'Youth Jobs Guarantee'.

Mr Molloy who was in Brussels last
week as a member of the Committee of the Regions said,

“There are more than 5 and a half
million young people across the EU not able to find work. Across the European
Union, 22% of people between the ages of 15-24 are jobless, a figure that swells
to as much as 50% in Greece and Spain. Long-term youth unemployment reveals an
even starker reality: over 30% of young people have been unemployed for more
than twelve consecutive months.

“Martina Anderson MEP has lobbied
for the use of the European Social Fund to support programmes aimed at tackling
this problem. The global economic downturn has meant that young workers can
often only access precarious, temporary jobs or traineeships which offer little
real prospect of career progression.

"Many young people now see
emigration as the only option open to them so we must ensure that deliberate
and determined interventions are put in place to give young people choices. The
‘Youth Jobs guarantee’ aims to ensure that member states guarantee every young
person under 25 a job, training or educational placement within a set number of
months of becoming unemployed.”

“Sinn Féin as members of the
GUE/NGL group urged the Commission and the European Council to dedicate a sufficiently financed specific fund to create a
true ‘youth guarantee’ which would secure the future of Europe's youth by
guaranteeing them real rights to qualified, adequately paid and stable
employment and social security, the right to housing, and the establishment of
an ‘autonomy allowance’ mechanism in the context of a European minimum wage.

"With these objectives as a
basis, Sinn Féin will campaign for the realisation of this kind of project
across Ireland together with young people, their associations and unions."